Melissa Joan Hart Clarifies Recent Podcast Comments About Her Faith After Being Labeled Anti-Semitic

She’s setting the record straight! Melissa Joan Hart is making headlines this week for clarifying comments she recently made during an interview on former The View star Paula Faris’ Journeys of Faith podcast after being labeled anti-semitic by some listeners. During her podcast sit-down, the mom-of-three, 42, recalled once giving one of her young sons some advice about attending a new school after he went to a Christian preschool.

Melissa Joan Hart Explains How Her Faith Has Helped Her Raise Three Kids

“My son was going into first grade, he was leaving his Christian preschool — he had gone to kindergarten there — and we’re putting him on the school bus… And I was scared. Look, he was 6 years old and we’re putting him on a school bus and he’s off on his own and how do I protect him now?” Melissa began. “We were sending him on the bus and I said, ‘Look, at the other school, we knew [your classmates] parents, we knew their siblings, we talked to them every day. We walked you into the classroom, we saw where you hung up your bag, and this time, you’re on your own to decide who’s good and bad. We don’t know if their people are good people. We don’t know if they believe in Jesus. And he really took the Jesus part to heart and he got on the bus and made a friend with a neighbor who was a Jewish kid.”

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Melissa said that her little boy and his new friend then started having “big talks” and her son asked questions like, “‘Well if you’re Jewish, how do you get to Heaven?'” The Melissa & Joey star then recounted a time after her son grew up and was in sixth grade when she got in a “heated” conversation about faith with the mother of her son’s Jewish friend. “When the mom called me with a problem in sixth grade I was like, well, ‘Do I regret telling my son that we don’t know if people believe in Jesus, so we don’t know their character?'” she asked herself. “‘Is that a wrong thing to say? Did I set my son on a bad path or was that the right thing to say and I should defend that?'”

After the actress’ statements were criticized and even called anti-semitic by some, Melissa took to Instagram to clarify what she meant by her advice. “I’ve been studying religion for the past eight years and am learning every day. I try to never judge anyone… unless they put ice in their wine… but I was simply telling my son that we knew the people at his old school, even down to their faith beliefs,” she began, according to Us Weekly.

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“The new kids in school, we didn’t know a thing about so he was going to have to judge for himself,” Melissa continued. “In the podcast, I talk about how he focused in on the Jesus part and it opened up discussions with friends and neighbors that might be a [sic] tricky for children to navigate. I never said Christians are superior. Just trying to explain better.”